I M Perfect lady

Tag: quilts

  • She was Me

    I had the opportunity to be on web radio, but more importantly the pleasure of speaking with a kindred spirit about my journey, to feel the ease and flow of conversation minus the struggle of explaining.

     

    She got me…and I her.  We looked at life through the same lens…from the inside out. 

     

    Usually it seems I am the odd man out, I am seeing things from a unique angle compared to others in a room, but this time I felt her looking with me in total understanding.

     

    I was also able to see me in a broader way, to realize how far I have come, how my art has led the way, how intuitively I have walked forward and the distance I have traveled.

     

    I have been so intent on this step here that I didn’t see how far I walked, how much I have changed and how deep within I had gone, or even how I now appear.

     

    It is like working on a piece of art, but not stepping back from it…to remain close and perfecting each tiny stroke, not realizing what you have created.

     

    I knew that I had changed drastically, but I don’t believe I saw the beauty in the changes or even the wisdom. 

     

    And I was truly able to see the art in me.

     

    To see my transformation from patterns and dark colors and rigid lines to being the Lady of my quilts.

     

    I am the lady…I can see how we are merging, I am catching up to my lady.  The distance is not such a future dream and far away hope and desire, but that I am living her life today.

     

    I am free, I have self-expression, I am empowered, and passionate, I am truth, I am me.

     

    In the interview I saw my Lady speaking, and she was me.

     

     IMG_5817
    Love her confidence and attitude…and I love that it is within me, has been…waiting for me to embrace it.

    IMG_6320 
    This is how my quilts hang in a quilt show…they never seemed to match.  The first time I seen this, I cried, for they fit in like me…not the same as the rest. 

    IMG_6319 
    I eventually was able to recognize that not fitting in was okay…but I still chuckle at

    how different my quilts appear next to others…just like me we are in a league of our own. 

  • Your Art

    Between The Artist’s Way writings and exercises as well as pondering a Bio for myself, it came to me that Life and Art mirror each other, perfectly.

     

    My Art has changed along with me, or me along with my Art, at times it gets confusing as to who is leading who.

     

    I used to live life following a pattern, steering close within the lines, feeling secure that if I lived a certain way, I would know how life would go and where I would be in the end.

     

    My life style matched my quilting and crafts, I followed patterns and felt daring when I did not.

     

    One of my first attempts at Art was working in clay, and I made button covers and bolo ties and necklaces, all very bohemian, triangles and swirls.  When I brought them to a Gallery, the lady replied upon seeing them, “that’s not Art.”

     

    I remember feeling the blow, but still stood by the ‘art’…and signed up for a local Art Fair, had a tent and sold quite a few necklaces and bolo ties.  In a booth to my left was the lady from the Art Gallery, she watched as folks walked away with my  ‘not’ Art.

     

    For some reason, even against criticism I followed my Art…for it felt like Art to me.  And while I wasn’t good at standing up for my self at that time, I stood resolute behind my creations.

     

    Another Bright idea I had was to make coffin quilts. They rest gently on the coffin and have a drape that hangs down to cover your lower half.  These quilts spoke of the things the person loved while living.  I felt they were a memory quilt of sorts, a remembrance of what their Spirit enjoyed while living.  Yet they were misunderstood by the funeral home director how deals with dead bodies and the grieving.

    He said they were too full of ego.  I was shocked and horrified, for they were the complete opposite.

     

    This was my first glimpse of the confusion between Art/Spirit and ego.

     

    My art had more spirit in it than I myself did, which is why I felt so strongly aligned with it, a part of me was in each piece, perhaps more of me than was living in my life at that time.

     

    And the folks talking about my art were saying more about themselves than about my art. 

     

    While I was trying to find the definition between Art and Craft, I should have been looking closer at the people who were looking at me.

     

    Today my life is much more in sync with my spirit, with my truth and my integrity, so my art bleeds the same, it echoes me, and I fully understand when folks don’t understand my art, they more or less will not understand me.

     

    The lady from the Gallery dresses very different, her clothes shouting Artist, and it seems to me she is trying to be an artist backwards.  That she is believes if she looks the part, art will come.

     

    I feel that my Art is taunting me and hollering to me to be more like it, to add color and loosen up, to catch up…to dare to stand unique and it seems I am living precariously through my art…or using it to let my self run wild. 

     

    My art makes me an Artist; I don’t make art to be an Artist.

     

    My quilts are much further ahead of me in life; it takes months sometimes for me to understand the meanings or messages they bring. 

     

    Similar to my life story and how looking closely at my life’s events, I needed each one to create who I am today.

     

    Perhaps each day or moment in our lives are little works of Art, expressions of Spirit…your Art.

     Smug mug pics 888

     

  • The Artist Way.

    December 1, 2004, I began writing Morning Pages, a tool in the book, “The Artist Way,” A Course in Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron.

    Here Julia explains the Morning Pages.

    “There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. These daily meanderings are not meant to be Art. Or even writing. I stress that point to reassure the nonwriters working with this book. Writing is simply one of the tools. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”

    “The Morning Pages are not supposed to sound smart – although sometimes they might. Most times they won’t and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you. And you shouldn’t even read them yourself for the first eight weeks or so. Just write three pages, and stick them into an envelope. Or write three pages in a spiral notebook and don’t leaf back through. Just write three pages and three more the next day.”

    “Although occasionally colorful, the morning pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland – even silly sounding. Good!”

    “All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover’s eye – this stuff eddies through your consciousness and muddies our days. Get it on the page.”
    Julia Cameron

    Six and a half years later I read my first Morning Pages, and she is absolutely correct, they are rambling, fragmented, petty and all over the board, but I recall enjoying them.

    Sitting down with a notepad, a bunch of well sharpened pencils and writing three pages worth. Let me tell you, you do have to scratch and sift to find three pages worth.

    It is amazing what pours out of you once you begin, “Good Morning Pages….”

    I had a problem calling them pages I kept calling them papers. Nonetheless, I wrote. I wrote mindless chitchat for three days, and then it was discovered that my father was a pedophile on Dec 4th and there shows a break of about a week and a half and then I picked up a pencil and wrote again.

    The Morning Pages became journals and the journals changed into a blog, but the writing continued, the exploration and discovery and recovery deepened…

    This tool literally saved me as I walked into deep waters of life, however, I feel I want to go back and pick up where I left off, doing The Artist Way. Reading the book and doing the Twelve Week Exercises.

    As I begin again, I have invited a bunch of Lady Friends to join me…and I am excited I do have a few takers! Anyone can join…there is room for everyone!

    I am excited to begin again, as I was back then, for I felt I was idling along in life on pause or repeat perhaps and was feeling like I needed to open myself up wider…to grow or stretch, to expand my life to include more artist like things, classes or outings etc…and I feel that again.

    I am once again stepping it up a level or kicking it up a notch, expanding my horizons, using this one life and experiencing more that it has to offer, adding to me some new and different things.

    I will go back to handwriting the three pages each morning. I can’t wait to see what happens. I have missed the sharpened pencils and the exercise of writing without a thought…and even more excited to have Lady Friends who will join me on The Artist Way.

    Smug mug pics 992

  • Uncontrollable me.

    My Art Quilt group was challenged to work with silk and yesterday we shared our experiences.

    If you all have seen or felt or worn silk, you know that it is a moving fabric, it is slippery and slides like it has a life of its own.

    As I played with the silk, I enjoyed it self-expression, its fluid nature lent itself to being used for water and it stands out instead of laying flat pressed neatly like the typical cotton quilt fabric. Used for Lady’s skirts it was fabulous, for it moved and flowed easily.

    It stretched our imaginations to use this alive moving fabric, for you can’t cut it easily, it doesn’t lay down stiff, it glides and wiggles, so in order to make it behave, you have to put a ‘stabilizer’ under it.

    I sat and listened to how some ‘controlled’ the silk to make it lay down like cotton and I was confused. How they added a straightener to back side to take out the fluidity and light airy movement.

    I didn’t quite get why they wanted to take away what is so alive and electric…yet did understand in order to make it fit into their patterns, they had to.

    Last night as I was about to fall asleep, it came to me. They were trying to control the delightful movement it naturally has, the way it just is uncontrollable and instead have it perform like cotton.

    It isn’t cotton, but if you add a foundation of interfacing or another lightweight ‘controlling’ fabric, it will now act like cotton.

    Then a thought came in that the silk fabric represents how live moves and flows and how we all want to put a ‘stabilizer’ on it so we can know how it will go or so we can ‘control’ it better. We are not comfortable with the unknown or with the flow speaking to us, we like to speak to the flow and tell it how to move.

    So, as children do we arrive like silk, flowing, moving, uncontrollable and not easily handled, and then our parents and society add ‘stabilizers’ or straighten us out, and we become rigid and flat. We may have a shiny surface, but we don’t move with the freedom from within, our natural self has been hardened for control.

    We may look the same, but we don’t move the same or respond in our natural free expression, we have been added layers of beliefs and programs so we fit into the pattern of society, we line up and become a piece of the quilt our family has been creating long before we arrived.

    When I played with the silk fabric I was extremely excited about the way it moved and slide around, how it challenged me to find ways to adjust to its nature, I never once thought to make it work differently and I was so shocked that others found a way to settle it down.

    While it does lend shimmer and shine to the cotton that lays next to it, it somehow made me feel sad for the silk to see it so lifeless, its wiggle unwiggable, its flow flattened like being in a straight jacket.

    I love that now I feel more like silk, I move in my own natural way, I don’t want or need ‘stabilizer’ that comes in shades of religious beliefs and societal conformities.

    I want to be the wiggly uncontrollable me.

  • Let me be Free!

    While many may not feel or experiences brushes from souls passed, I feel the presence of my father’s sister, the one who taught me how to quilt, who set me on a path of playing with fabric that suited my nature.

    She didn’t bend me to do what she felt, but listened and offered to me a pattern that fit my free spirit, one that gave me my first drink of what it feels like to be the architect, the designer and the builder, she opened the door for me to play.

    She herself would do intricate, tiny little pieces that had to match perfectly, her work was detailed and painstakingly put together, I was her complete opposite, yet we matched in doing what we loved to do.

    Her past relationships with men were ones that left her hurting and it seemed she found solace in Art.

    My youngest daughter, out of the blue, says she wants to do a quilt, and it is the same quilt my Aunt had offered to me as a good first quilt.

    Unbeknownst to my daughter, I feel she is being spoken to by her great aunt, for she knows the feelings my daughter is going through and is heading her in a direction where she can find herself, Art.

    During my darkest spots on my journey, I clung to the moments when I had the energy to be lost in fabric, design and colors, and in those moments, I could feel my Aunt speak to me, telling me words of wisdom, that applied to working on a new technique in quilting or walking a new walk in life.

    I was given my Aunt’s sewing machine after she died, and I believe her spirit lingers nearby and encourages me to stretch and reach and be beyond where she was able to be.

    Her influence in my quilting, especially when I had just begun was key to me continuing forward, her undying faith that I could do anything is with me still.

    I felt that I wasn’t alone anymore in teaching my daughter, that I would have leagues of woman who have gone before lending their wisdom and voices with mine.

    My aunt loved my daughter, her spirit, her disposition, her spunk, her flair for being herself, and I know that if it is possible to help her now, she will.

    Today is a full circle moment, where I can be the teacher as I take my daughter to choose the fabric of her first quilt, it is my greatest hope that I can instill in her the love of quilting that my Aunt gave to me, or the art of creating.

    And all she did was open the door and let me be free!

  • Success

    Life flows with such ease and delight at times, you feel its divine orchestration, where each small detail you didn’t even know you needed is taken care of.

    I have felt this in getting life lessons, where its painfully easing you into awareness, but my day yesterday was the opposite.

    My day off prompted me to ask three friends to share the day with me, which tripled my joy.

    I was chauffeured and entertained with great conversation, and given different viewpoints as our day unfolded.

    We learned we travel well together; we seemingly flow in similar directions yet with different views, enhancing our experiences by adding a new flavor I myself couldn’t have gotten alone.

    Sampling a small Quilt display to browsing Art books in a Library, Lunch, shopping for fabric, chocolates and clothes, each of us arriving and leaving with what we love.

    The energy of the ladies mingled with the energy of what we saw built within me the desire to be better, to expand my quilting techniques, to explore more, play more, enjoy more, be more.
    The day was much more than I dreamed it would be.

    Thanks Ladies for sharing yourselves so abundantly with me.

    With renewed energy, exciting fabric and filled with ideas, I am ready to play in an Artful way. The first road trip a great success….

  • My Hope.

    “ Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

      ~George Bernard Shaw

     

    I was reminded yesterday of my gift of quilted Ladies, and how they have slowly transpired into fun, expressive, alive, delightful works of Art. 

     

    How My Lady tentatively showed her shadow and silhouette, a tease of what was to come.

     

    She seems to beckon me forward, daring me to discover a much wider world.  And if she can dare, so can I!

     

    Emerging lady

     

    When life overwhelms me, when the future seems a jumbled mess, when I find myself lost in my reality, it is then I feel the greatest urge to quilt.

     

    I know who I am when I quilt, I feel connected and balanced as I toss about fabric, new colors and play with different poses, I am confident once again, in me.

     

    My lady has been an Artful companion that I lean upon as I wobble along.

     

    She brings comfort, courage, and a daring spirit when my own fails; she has opened up new doorways and has planted seeds for a brighter tomorrow. 

     

    I see my future self artfully displayed in a variety of poses, I see my spirit dancing with life, I see potential once again.

     

    Without my lady I would not have come this far, she has kept the Spirit of creativity within.  Between us a new energy flows. 

     

    Our latest adventure is a Juried Quilt show, “Art Quilts of the UP.”  Three lady quilts are off on a new experience, how exciting to be along for the ride.

     

    Thank you My Lady for gently leading me back to myself, for mirroring to me my wellness and my hope.

     

     

     IMG_3312 

    Thank you Lady, we will be okay.